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Pocket
May 2009
On Sale: May 12, 2009
448 pages ISBN: 1416527397 EAN: 9781416527398 Hardcover
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Mystery Historical
From the acclaimed author of The Rossetti Letter
comes a dazzling novel of intrigue, passion, and royal
secrets that shifts tantalizingly between Restoration-era
London and present-day Cambridge. London, 1672. The
past twelve years have brought momentous changes: the
restoration of the monarchy, a devastating plague and
fire. Yet the city remains a teeming, thriving metropolis,
energized by the lusty decadence of Charles II's court and
burgeoning scientific inquiry. Although women enjoy
greater freedom, they are not allowed to practice
medicine, a restriction that physician Hannah Devlin
evades by treating patients that most other doctors shun:
the city's poor. But Hannah has a special knowledge that
Secretary of State Lord Arlington desperately needs. At
the king's Machiavellian court, Hannah attracts the
attention of two men, charming courtier Ralph Montagu and
anatomist Dr. Edward Strathern, as well as the attention
of the powerful College of Physicians, which views her
work as criminal. When two influential courtiers are found
brutally murdered, their bodies inscribed with arcane
symbols, Hannah is drawn into a dangerous investigation by
Dr. Strathern, who believes the murders conceal a far-
reaching conspiracy that may include Hannah's late father
and the king himself. Cambridge, 2008. Teaching history
at Trinity College is Claire Donovan's dream come true --
until one of her colleagues is found dead on the banks of
the River Cam. The only key to the professor's unsolved
murder is a seventeenthcentury diary kept by his last
research subject, Hannah Devlin, physician to the king's
mistress. With help from the eclectic collections of
Cambridge's renowned libraries, Claire and historian
Andrew Kent follow the clues Devlin left behind,
uncovering secrets of London's dark past and Cambridge's
equally murky present, and discovering that events of
three hundred years ago may still have consequences
today.... A suspenseful and richly satisfying tale
brimming with sharply observed historical detail, The
Devlin Diary brings past and present to vivid life.
With wit and grace, Christi Phillips holds readers
spellbound with an extraordinary novel of secrets,
obsession, and the haunting power of the past.
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